28 hardly passed Fifty-ninth Street before the noise in the tunnel grew louder and we noticed, sliding into view on the track beside ours, the black back and then the last car's windows of the local that had preceded us. We were over- taking it, and T - looked at me and then nodded his head portentously to- ward it. "You see?" he said. I said I saw. The local must just have been pull- ing out of Columbus Circle, for at first we overhauled it rapidly, passing first one car, then a second, a third, each with its quota of passengers sitting by twos and threes on the rattan seats and reading their newspapers, and each dropping backward as we advanced. Then, as the local's speed increased, ours seemed to slow, until for a time the two trains ran neck and neck and we could look, as if in to a room that was station- ary or at most only rocking slightly, in- to the car that was travelling side by side with us. It was, by the oddest of chances, the car that T - had prevented me from entering. The red-faced man, Iob- served, had secured the corner seat un- der the Subway Sun. He sat there with his legs crossed, turned a little sidewise on the bench, staring soberly down at the rest of the car . Next him were a man with a small brown bag on his lap and then a girl reading a book, both strangers to me. But beyond them were three others that I recognized-the woman in the green dress and the woman with the little boy. All three were staring up at the advertising cards, their faces as rapt as if they were in church. They sat there, where we might have been, and paid no attention to us; I confess it gave me a curiously ghostly feeling to overtake them, ride side by side with them for a moment, and then leave them behind. For in a moment the local checked its speed. The cars dropped backward, slowly at first and then faster and faster, until the win- dows were ripping past in a continuous flow of light. It ended suddenly in the darkened prow of the train, ploughing blindly along, and then that slid away backward, too; we flashed past a local station-Sixty-sixth Street, I presume -and went roaring triumphantly on- ward. We pulled into Seventy-second Street just as another local, the train ahead of the one we had passed, was discharging its passengers. T- was much impressed. Throughout the latter part of the trip, he had been shouting at me, but the I noise of the train made hearing difficult. When we got off, however, he seized my arm. "You see how we gain?" he demanded excitedly. "A whole train! It's as if we'd taken the train heforr the one you wanted to get on back at Times Square." " B ' h . . ut we weren t t ere In tIme to catch it," I said. "We'd be in time now, though," he " d " D ' 'I W ' . d sa!. on t you see r e ve gazne time." He kept repeating it. "We've gained three or four minutes on that other train. We're here that much earlier." Then he must have seen me smile. "A lot can happen in three minutes," he re- minded me. "Manhole covers can blow up, taxicabs run amok. . ." \Ve had reached the street now, and I admit that I glanced around appre- hensively. All seemed calm on the side- walks, however; in the street, the traf- fic was orderly. "The same things might happen now," I suggested. He looked at me seriously. "Ah, no," he said. "It's always the rear guard that is attacked. We're in the lead. Why-" He broke off long enough to skip through the crosstown traffic, then led me on up Broadway. "Why, we're even ahead of ourselves," he said. "Just look at it this way. Suppose we had taken the other train." He glanced at his wristwatch before going on. "We'd have reached the station by now . We'd be off the train, we'd be just about coming up the stairs. But everything we'd see when we reached the street would be different. The cars that were passing when we arrived- when we really arrived, I mean- would be up in t e Eighties by now. The cars that we'd see back there now would have been blocks away down- town, before. "Do you see the difference? Do you see all that could have happened in the meantime?" He was warming to his sub- \ I J ( , . ject, and when T - warms to a subject he both walks and talks faster. People stared at us as we pushed rapid- ly along through the crowds on the side- walk. "And when we reached this spot" -he stopped a moment with both feet plan ted, to make his meaning clear- "everything then would have changed a little, too. The people we see now would have turned corners, rung bells, unlocked doors and entered them; that woman going into the drugstore there would have bought whatever she's go- ing in there to buy. Or maybe someone already in the store would have pulled out a gun, revealed himself as a holdup man. Fire might have broken out some- where. . ." He dragged me on. "Or we might not have come this way at all," he said. We had reached the corner of Sev- enty-fourth Street and he stopped there, teetering on the curb, looking down at me through the shine of his glasses (have I told you that T - is taller than I am and wears glasses?). "\\1 e must think of that, too," he said. "Traf- fic might have been thicker back there and we'd have grown tired of waiting. We'd have taken a taxi instead, an d-" Still looking at me, he stepped off the curb and into the path of a cab that was turning the corner. The driver was quick with his brakes. T -, I am glad to say, wasn't hurt much, but he was shaken enough to abandon the idea of buying a piano that day. What struck me as odd, though, was the identity of the cab's passenger. I couldn't be sure, for I had only seen the man twice before, and when the accident happened he paid off the driver hurriedly and disappeared in the crowd. But I am almost certain that it was the red-faced man who had taken the local train. The first local, I mean. The one we didn't get in at Times Square. -ROBERT M. COATES . CRITICAL YEARS J1 Charting of Various Findings in the Daily Press as to the Year of Married Life in líf 7 hich Divorce Is Most Likely to Occur RESEARCHER Judge Gustavus Loevinger Divorce Proctor Evangeline Starr Dr. Alfred Cahen, statistician at Columbia University Unknown Unkno,vn YFAR POINT OF RESEARCH St. Paul First Seattle Ne,v York Thi rd Fou rth Reno T,velfth Australia T,venty-fourth -We E. F ARBSTEIN